The book is called The Weight of Responsibility and it is, among other things, a reflection on the lack, on occasions, of ethical commitment of intellectuals, of their lack of courage to confront the hegemonic ideas worked from dogmatic positions, to the left and right. Its author, Tony Judt, British and historian, continues to be a benchmark for European social democracy and classical liberalism, despite the fact that he died in 2010. His latest book, Something is going wrong, which he wrote when he knew that life was giving him was escaping, it is a warning, a wake-up call given the spread of selfishness in society and the clear decline in solidarity in ecosystems where the loss of values that cement cohesion favors the most reactionary, extremist and populist positions.
Ximo Puig left a copy of The Weight of Responsibility on the table of what has been his office for eight years at the Palau de la Generalitat on Monday as a gift to the new president, Carlos Mazón. Also a letter and a map of the Antic Regne de València. The expresident knows well the importance of gestures and symbols, after a lifetime dedicated to politics. It was his way of welcoming the new president and of closing a period in which, seen in perspective, his figure has been strengthened, although there are not a few, also in his party, who try to erode his profile after the defeat on 28 -M. Esteban González Pons said it in an interview with this newspaper last Saturday: "Ximo Puig has been a good president of the Generalitat Valenciana". It will be necessary to observe how he manages his post-presidency, and if it is effective, in many aspects, his double work as territorial senator and regional deputy.
Ximo Puig left the Palau de la Generalitat on Monday welcoming Carlos Mazón, who took office after a short walk from the Corts Valencianes accompanied by the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the president of the Corts, Llanos Massó (vox). On one side, the best representative of the neoliberal current of the PP (which says it wants to reactivate the Madrid-Valencia "axis of prosperity"), and on the other, a figure on the rise of the far-right formation in the Valencian Community. The new president walked with two symbolic references of what Tony Judt alerts in his works, of the marked current tendencies to damage the social model built after World War II, more serious in the case of Vox, because it also points to individual liberties . To be fair, Judt also warns of extremes on the left, which he sees as destabilizing impulses against the policies that moderate conservatives and social democrats have tried to maintain in Europe for more than half a century.
Ximo Puig said goodbye to his position on Monday, left the Palau and launched a message of collaboration with the new popular administration but forceful opposition if it yields to Vox's regressive postulates. The former president made official, at least in the forms, what the British historian demanded in life: the collaboration of the systemic parties to prevent our societies from regressing towards times of fractures and conflicts. The writer asks himself in his work: "Why have we been so hasty in tearing down the dikes that our predecessors painstakingly built? Are we so sure that floods are not coming?" Asking questions well is the best way to find the best solutions. Even more so in such a complex period. Ximo Puig's gift to Carlos Mazón was, finally, a good detail.
